Borough selling pair of Palmer properties

PALMER — For sale: One former morgue, one former school district administration building. Neither is up to code. Both are fixer-upers.

The Mat-Su Borough is hoping to sell two of its more dilapidated holdings. Both are in Palmer. The old city morgue is at 247 S. Alaska St., the administration building is at 125 West Evergreen St.

“We voted to sell these two buildings back in September and I just would want to remind everyone of the reason why I asked to do that,” said Assemblyman Pete Houston. “Palmer’s looking pretty nice, except for these two buildings that the borough owns.”

He said the city has worked hard to spruce up the town and if the borough can’t find its way to sprucing up the morgue and the administration building it should let the private sector have a crack at it.

Assemblywoman Cindy Bettine said selling the buildings would not have been her first choice. The administration building in particular has figured into nearly every discussion the assembly has had about expanding into a building other than its current centralized Palmer headquarters.

“I was very, very interested in seeing it be used by the borough and study after study basically came back saying that wasn’t going to happen and even recommending demolition,” she said. “I really believe that the private sector is going to be better at this than we would be.”

As Houston said, the assembly voted in September to sell the buildings. On Tuesday, borough staff came back with appraisals — $350,000 for the administration building and $380,000 for the morgue.

Cameron said the administration building is completely vacant. The morgue, she said, is currently used as storage for borough equipment — voting machines, Parks and Recreation Department equipment — and records. Valley Mountain Bikers and Hikers Association holds a borough permit to conduct meetings there.

Staff also came to Tuesday’s meeting with a request: If a buyer comes in offering to pay that price, could they have standing permission to complete the transaction?

Nancy Cameron, land management agent with the borough, said the borough would work with a real estate agent and would end up paying a 6 percent fee. Staff would only act if the offer was for that assessed value.

“The only price that we would consider would be that fair market value price,” she said. “If it were to go higher that would be great, we would certainly entertain that. I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Any deviation in either the price or the terms would have to go to the assembly for approval.

“We would like to be able to expedite the process and not have to come before the assembly and cause a six-week delay,” she said. “Sometimes there are buyers that are ready to go and we do not want to delay them.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.